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Fewer police means fewer tickets in South Burlington

The South Burlington Police Department is catching fewer speeders than it did five years ago, though the city’s population is growing and traffic is one of residents’ top concerns. The police chief says the change is due, in part, to the department being understaffed for the past several years.

The South Burlington Police Department is catching fewer speeders than it did five years ago, though the city’s population is growing and traffic is one of residents’ top concerns.

The police chief says the change is due, in part, to the department being understaffed for the past several years.

Residents have told the city on surveys that traffic safety is one of the top priorities, Police Chief Trevor Whipple said. That’s one reason the police department has a three-person team devoted to traffic enforcement, analyzing crashes, monitoring intersections and helping with traffic at community events.

But the department often has to pull traffic officers into other responsibilities, and those staffing changes have been showing up in lower ticket numbers and deflated revenues.

“Because we have been what I believe to be less than adequately staffed, we have not been able to dedicate officers to traffic safety,” Whipple said.

South Burlington police issued 1,688 traffic tickets last year, down more than a third from 2008. Officers also stopped about 1,300 fewer cars overall. Traffic revenue is roughly half what it was five years ago.

That’s frustrating news for people like Greg Weaver, who lives in senior housing on Farrell Street. He said he sees police on the street from time to time as they drive to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility. But in four years of walking his dog on the street he said he has never seen a car pulled over for speeding.

“They’re not enforcing speed limits on Farrell Street,” Weaver said. Drivers use the street as a cut-through to avoid Shelburne Road, barreling through faster than the legal 25 miles per hour, he said.

“It’s one of the areas that we know has a high complaint level. It does have speeders,” Chief Whipple said. “We have not had a ton of time for discretionary traffic enforcement … We do go there from time to time.”

Police on the roads are just one strategy in slowing speed: Burt Wilke, who lives on Laurel Hill Drive in South Burlington, said he has seen fewer police cars in his neighborhood over the years — but speed bumps that were added seem to have done the trick.

Wilke, who said he was once involved in a traffic accident in California as the result of a speeder, said traffic safety is “not insignificant.”

“I do realize in the overall scheme of things, I can see why it gets pushed down on the priority list,” Wilke said.

Several other Chittenden County cities and towns, including Winooski, Essex and Colchester, have also seen drops in traffic revenue over the last five years, but none as steep as in South Burlington. The town of Shelburne, where traffic ticket revenue grew by about two-thirds over the same period, is an outlier.

Could it be that South Burlington ticket numbers are lower because drivers are simply getting better at slowing down?

“I’m going to guarantee you that’s not the case,” Chief Whipple said. “I wish it was, but we never go without speeders.”

Tracking low

South Burlington’s traffic ticket revenue has fluctuated through the years, from $107,492 in fiscal year 2008 to $59,608 in fiscal year 2013.

“We are not going out chasing speeders to make money,” Whipple said. “That just is a byproduct of what we do.”

South Burlington is on track to raise less than half of its budget for ticket revenue in the current fiscal year ending in June. This year the police department expected to see $110,000 coming from the state court to the city’s general fund. A small portion of that revenue could be coming from other municipal ordinance violation fines, Whipple noted, but the majority is from traffic tickets.

“The police department does not directly benefit from any ticket we write,” Whipple said.

That goal was in line with the fiscal 2012 traffic revenue figure.

At the end of February, eight months into this fiscal year, traffic tickets had brought in just $35,315.

The fluctuating revenue makes revenue forecasting tricky.

“We do not have quotas, but it’s also an important factor in our budget,” Chief Whipple said.

Tom Hubbard, South Burlington deputy city manager, is hopeful the city can meet the revenue goal as patrol shifts fill out. He said he understands that the police chief has been working with a reduced staff that’s less able to focus on traffic safety.

When a city department is coming in significantly lower on revenue, Hubbard said the city may ask the department head to defer some expenses to balance the budget.

“A budget’s a plan ... We hope that departments can come as close to that number as they’re anticipated,” Hubbard said.

The rear-view mirror

The chief said many factors could be contributing to the drop in traffic ticket revenue, but staffing levels are one factor that he can pinpoint. He said the department is rearranging staff more frequently than in the past, moving officers from traffic enforcement to take on other duties, and that means fewer resources to devote to the roads.

“We’ve done that a ton over the last couple of years, just because we’re short-staffed,” Whipple said.

The department dropped from 41 to 39 officers in 2009 and 2010, and later budget constraints prompted the South Burlington Police Department to restructure the traffic safety unit. Traffic officers began taking over other duties when needed, usually on a day-to-day basis or when other officers take leave.

“When it was realized that the authorized strength of the force would only be 39 we made some organizational changes so that patrol coverage could be provided without excessive overtime,” Whipple wrote in an email.

The staffing challenges come as South Burlington, along with other police departments, is seeing an increased need to respond to nontraffic situations, such as mental illness calls, as well as crimes such as burglary and retail theft. Chief Whipple said all three types of calls have increased.

Those factors might also pull officers away from traffic enforcement.

“Motor vehicle enforcement is, to some degree, discretionary,” he said.

More officers on the road may not mean safer streets overall, Whipple said. He was hesitant to make that connection without comparing traffic ticket and warning numbers to crash statistics. He did say, however, that roads where police have been focusing traffic enforcement are typically safer for a short period of time.

The city budget that South Burlington voters approved last month anticipates $90,000 in traffic ticket revenue — more realistic than this year’s figure, but still a stretch compared to recent years. The budget also allows the police department to hire an additional officer, in addition to a position that had been funded by a grant.

That would bring the department to 42 officers when everyone has completed training next spring. Then, Chief Whipple expects the department may not have to reassign officers from traffic safety as often.

Weaver, the Farrell Street resident, said the city has responded to residents’ concerns by installing raised crosswalks with lights and stop signs. Those measures have helped, but he believes drivers would slow down if they knew they were likely to get a ticket.

“They just need to patrol the area a little more and show people that they enforce the speed limit in South Burlington. … Let the speeders go somewhere else,” Weaver said.

Contact April Burbank at (802) 660-1863 or aburbank@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AprilBurbank